Movie Review – Sucker Punch (2011)

Synopsis:
A young girl is institutionalized by her abusive stepfather. Retreating to an alternative reality as a coping strategy, she envisions a plan which will help her escape from the mental facility.

Sucker Punch tells the tale of an orphaned young woman, Babydoll who is wrongly committed to a mental institution. There, her and her fellow inmates attempt to escape from their prison by escaping into their imagination, a world filled with demons, dragons and deadly robots.

As entertaining as that all seems, the film misses on most occasions, but does hit on a few. Some of the action is very well done and the music is superb and fits the mood perfectly. The film also showcases some excellent visual directing by Zack Snyder. For my tastes, Zack Snyder has been hit or Miss. I was a fan of the Dawn of the Dead remake and Watchmen, but not of 300. Sucker Punch had a much more 300 feel to it that the other films.

Outside of that, much of the movie spends far too much time away from the action and trying to build a story that never really materializes. In my opinion, they had a look to work with, but never pulled it off. Outside of Emily Browning, the girls were pretty much forgettable. I have been a fan of Emily Browning from previous movies like The Uninvited and Darkness Falls, so I figured that she would hold her own easily.

Being as this was Zack Snyder’s original story and direction, this was a huge measuring stick to feature his talents. While I had hoped that he would show us something more, it came across as a platform for him to use his imagination in some very “out there” dream sequences.

This was a film that I really wanted to enjoy as I had been looking forward to it for quite a while. Hopefully, I will get into it with subsequent viewings, but I am not really too sure that will happen.